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It was a brisk 3 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday morning as Becky Hallowell led 27 bundled-up fourth-graders through the snowy woods at Hidden Valley Nature Center in Jefferson.
The students from Wiscasset Elementary School were there for their monthly field trip to the center, where they spent a full day outdoors.
In the morning, they hiked from the parking lot to the center while looking for cardboard snowshoe hares. They counted how many white and brown ones they spotted and assessed whether it was harder to see the white ones in the snow, providing a lesson about the utility of their natural camouflage against predators.
“Nature’s the base from where we launch all the rest of it,” their teacher, Hallowell, said.
The students were partaking in a form of education that has become increasingly common across the midcoast in recent years. Rather than just have students do all their learning in a classroom, more teachers are integrating the outdoors into their lessons.
The practice got a boost during the COVID pandemic, when there were health and safety reasons for keeping kids outside, but state and local officials have continued to embrace it even after the health threat waned, given the other benefits associated with outdoor learning.
In the Wiscasset program, students use their monthly trips to the nature center to visit trees they’ve “adopted” to note any changes. On Tuesday, two students found that theirs — which they named “America UK Donkey” — had sprouted saplings.
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When they return to the classroom, Hallowell weaves those lessons into the rest of their learning.
“We use that as a springboard for classes about renewable energy resources, map-making, deciding what kind of persuasive writing we could use to protect our natural resources,” Hallowell said. “So we try to integrate as much nature-based education into the curriculum.”
Beyond the field trips, students can also join an after-school outdoors club in which they listen to the sounds of the ocean and nature and reflect on the experience in journals, noting the weather, temperature and other details.
While there are no data showing how many outdoor learning programs there are in Maine, the state has been investing more resources into them in recent years.
Gov. Janet Mills launched the Maine Outdoor Learning Initiative in 2022 and expanded it last year, providing funding to help middle and high school students access marine ecology and other experiential learning opportunities.
The midcoast has become something of a hub for this type of learning. Numerous local school districts have started similar programs, and regional groups such as the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset, the Herring Gut Coastal Science Center in Port Clyde and Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership have partnered with the state on its outdoor initiative.
Justin Dimmel, an associate professor of mathematics education and instructional technology at the University of Maine in Orono, said he’s seen more interest in outdoor learning since the pandemic, although he’s not yet sure if it represents a permanent shift.
Beyond supporting in-class learning, the excursions also help students to better engage with and understand the world, given that humans — like all animals — learn by exploring and doing.
“When you can create opportunities for children to be outside and to be engaged with the way the air feels on their face, the way the sun is reflecting off of different things in the environment, the sounds that you might hear, you have this kind of multi-sensory experience of just being in the world,” Dimmell said. “I don’t think you can really measure the benefit of that.”
Several students from Wiscasset Elementary School agreed.
Nine-year-old Austin Shirey said spending time outside and moving makes it easier for him to sit in class. Other benefits are that he loves to hear the birds chirping and doesn’t have to do math while out on the field trips.
Two other Wiscasset Elementary students, Addyson Petrie and Izzy Bailey, who are also 9, demonstrated their understanding of the natural ecosystem.
“If the fox doesn’t eat bunnies, then the whole cycle will go down. And if the whole cycle will go down, some of the trees might die,” Izzy said. “At least we’re trying to keep the ecosystem safe.”
Elsewhere in the region, students at Boothbay Region Elementary School can also take advantage of an after-school nature club that’s offered three days a week through a partnership started last fall with Hearty Roots, an outdoors-based youth development group.
Participants can decide what their activity will be for the day, according to Program Manager Erin Quinley. Sometimes it’s high energy, like learning to start campfires or build shelters. Other times it’s playing cards or making friendship bracelets. However, Quinley said the middle school students currently in the club often lean toward outdoor play.
The Boothbay collaboration, which is currently free for middle schoolers to attend, was started with a grant from LincolnHealth’s Community Health Improvement Fund, which helps to reduce financial barriers for after-school programs.
“There are some kids that are just losing their minds sitting in class because they are kinesthetic learners,” Quinley said. “They need to get their hands on something, they need to move and a lot of confidence can be lost from those kinds of kids being forced into a learning environment that doesn’t match their learning needs.”
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.